Zakynthos to Zakynthos

Embarkation in Zakynthos port. The yacht heads north along the east coast to Cape Skinari, where the Blue Caves open into the limestone: a chain of arches and chambers lit from below, blue enough to colour the hull of a tender. The tender takes you inside; the water is deep and clear enough to swim in. Round the cape on the west coast is Navagio, the Shipwreck beach, where the rusting hull of the freighter Panagiotis has sat on the white shingle since 1980, closed off by cliffs on three sides and reachable only from the sea. The beach itself has been closed since 2023 because of the risk of rockfall from the cliffs, and the closure has been extended each year since: no landing on the sand and no swimming inside the cove, with boats keeping a set distance from the shore. The Shipwreck is seen from the water, and the swim stop is in one of the neighbouring coves. In the afternoon the yacht crosses to the northern tip of Kefalonia and ties up in Fiskardo, the one village on the island that survived the 1953 earthquake intact. Its pastel Venetian houses line a small harbour under cypress trees, and the quay is where the Ionian yachting season meets for dinner.

North across the Ithaca channel into the sheltered water between Lefkada and the mainland, a stretch of sea with the islets of Madouri, Sparti and Skorpios scattered across it. Skorpios is the private island bought by Aristotle Onassis in 1963, where he married Jacqueline Kennedy in 1968; it is still private and viewed from the water, which is also where the best swimming is. Lunch at anchor off Nydri, the resort town on Lefkada’s east coast, with the long bay of Vlicho behind it. In the afternoon the yacht runs up the east coast to Lefkada Town, entered through a canal past the Venetian fortress of Agia Mavra. Lefkada is the only Ionian island joined to the mainland, by a causeway and a floating bridge; its town was rebuilt after the earthquakes with timber upper storeys clad in painted corrugated sheet, which gives the streets their colour. The marina is a short walk from the main street and its cafés.

Two miles south of Paxos lies Antipaxos, an island of a few dozen residents, vineyards and two beaches, Voutoumi and Vrika, that are the reason most yachts come: white sand and water the colour of the Caribbean. The morning is spent at anchor here. After lunch the yacht runs north along the length of Corfu’s east coast to Corfu Town, the Ionian capital. The Old Town was a Venetian fortress city for four centuries and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2007: the Old Fortress on its rock, the Spianada, the largest square in Greece, and the Liston arcade built by the French on the model of the Rue de Rivoli. Behind them are narrow lanes with laundry across them, the church of Saint Spyridon and the shops of the kantounia. The yacht berths in the marina a short drive from the Old Town, and the evening belongs to Corfu.

A few miles down the coast from Assos is Myrtos, the beach that appears on most photographs of Kefalonia: a long bow of white pebbles between two cliffs, with water that shades from turquoise to a deep blue a short way out. From the sea the whole bay is in view at once, which it never is from the road. A swim here before the passage south along Kefalonia’s west coast, past the Shipwreck beach again on the way, to Zakynthos Town. The town was flattened by the 1953 earthquake and rebuilt on its old Venetian plan, with arcaded streets and the square named after the national poet Dionysios Solomos, who was born here. Above it the hill of Bochali, with the ruined Venetian castle, looks over the harbour and across to the Peloponnese. The last evening is in town, a few minutes’ walk from the yacht.